Technology

Nostrum(damus)

The computers that can map the Zika and Ebola genomes, fight cancer, find an Aids vaccine, investigate climate change and prove the existence of gravitational waves.

11 September 2017

Imagine a computer doing 13 677 trillion operations a second. A computer that’s comprised of 3 400 Lenovo servers connected by 48 kilometres of wire and cables. A computer that has 48 racks with 3 456 nodes and in these nodes there are two Intel Xeon Platinum chips with 24 processors with a staggering processor total of 165 888, all connected by more than 60km of high-speed network cabling. And every bit and byte is housed in, quite possibly, the most beautiful place that a computer has ever been able to call home – the Torre Girona Chapel.

This stunning 19th century church sits on the outskirts of Barcelona on the campus of the Polytechnic University of Catalona and was used as a Catholic church as recently as 1960. It was deconsecrated in the 1970s and has become the extraordinary home to the world’s most extraordinary machine – the MareNostrum 4.

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